DILAPIDATION

Imagine

IMAGINE a family living in this old house, smoke curling from the chimney as mom cooks dinner, dad sitting in a cane-bottom chair waiting for dinner, and tow-headed children running barefoot, chasing lightning bugs in the early evening. This place is just a few miles north of Vernon, Texas.

Where's Willie?

Windmills spin

WINDMILLS ARE ubiquitous across the Southwest, and this old homestead not far from Quanah, Texas, probably relied on this one or one like it to water the stock as well as provide water for the household.

Something about an old barn, an abandoned, decades-old house or a dilapidated tool shed stirs my imagination. I wonder who might have lived there; I contemplate how many bales of hay were pitched into the loft; I reflect on the labor, the sweat, and the stress that went into tending the animals, mending harnesses and sharpening tools.

I can imagine families building these structures, creating homes, businesses and memories. And I speculate on what happened to the people. What led them away, moving to a better place, crop failure, tragedy or happenstance?

I see a lot of abandoned, dilapidated, battered buildings across the rural Southwest. Each, I’m sure, has a story.